Institution
by LazyCreeper
Summary: His magic slowly becoming uncontrollable, Harry decides to check himself into a mental institution for the safety of himself and others.  But he discovers that a certain blonde-haired Slytherin made it there before he did...why?  Drarry, slow-burner, EWE!
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings: **This story is primarily written to be a Drarry, or a HPDM, or Harry/Draco, whatever you like to call it. But it's a slow-burner, meaning they're not going to fall in love and have sex with each other overnight. Because that's just ridiculous. And I hate it when stories do that.

This story is rated M. It's my first story I've picked this rating for. Why? There are mature themes here, such as depictions of various mental disorders, mentions of abuse and suicide, dirty language, male/male relationships, etc. It's not going to get very graphic, but you should be warned.

**Author's Note: **For those of you that are wondering, yes, I'm absolutely still working on my other story, _Ache_. But this idea hit my while I was staring off into the abyss in biology class and I had to come home and write it. Ever since I hit middle school I've been obsessed with things dealing with mental institutions, different mental disorders, etc. I read all the books I can get my hands on about it, like _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; The Bell Jar; Girl, Interrupted; _and one I've just recently started reading called _It's Kind of a Funny Story. _I decided to incorporate some of these themes into a fanfiction that takes place a few years after Harry defeats Voldemort. Writing _Ache_ was becoming too forced and I needed a break from it for a little while.

**Suggested Listening For This Chapter: **"The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis. Just because it's the song that plays when (spoiler alert! :P) Daisy kills herself in the movie _Girl, Interrupted._ It's pretty sad.

* * *

Harry made his way to Maple Hills Medical Center by Muggle transportation—wouldn't want the paparazzi snapping crude pictures of The Saviour walking into the looney bin, or anything, yeah? He took a small, black, very inconspicuous-looking motorcar with windows tinted black.

A very curt witch who gracefully ignored his fame greeted him at the front desk. She took his wand and handed him a stack of papers to fill out with a pre-loaded, soft-tipped quill. The fact that they didn't trust him with a regular writing utensil was enough to make him seriously question what the bloody hell he was doing there. But he sat down in a hard-backed chair and filled everything out anyway.

This whole thing had been doctor recommended—not mandatory, mind, just recommended. And Harry knew that meant, "_Actually, you need to go to a mental institution very badly, because your haywire magic and worsening temper and mood swings and everything else you've got wrong with you are steadily worsening and there's absolutely no hope for you if you don't—but since you sort of did the Wizarding world a pretty big favor by saving all our lives and all, you don't have to go if you don't wanna." _So now he was here. Here, with the soft-tipped quill poised just above the line where he was supposed to sign his name, committing himself to a six-month minimum stay at Maple Hills. He—

"Mr. Potter, sir?" the receptionist called gingerly. Harry looked down and a steady drip-drip-drip of ink was getting all over the parchment, bleeding steadily outward.

"Oh—sorry," Harry muttered. "Just—got a bit distracted." He tittered.

"Don't worry about it," the receptionist said, giving her wand a little flick, clearing the mess away. She did it with an air that she'd had to do that about a hundred times before. Harry guessed she probably had.

Harry didn't give it any more thought. He knew it had to be done, or he'd eventually kill himself by accident—or somebody else, if he _really_ lost control of his magic. Could he ever do something like that, even by mistake? He thought he could, and that's what scared him. He signed his name with a shaky hand.

The receptionist riffled briefly through his papers, so briefly in fact that Harry knew she must just be doing it for show, there was no way she or anybody else could read something that quickly. "Looks like you're all in order, sir," she said, smiling at him. She had a piece of gum in her mouth and she was moving her jaws around in a circle to chew it, like a cow chewing on grass. Harry wished she'd stop doing that.

"We're having your bags delivered to your room as we speak. Go down that hallway there—" she pointed, "—and make the first _right_. A nurse named _Mr. Bates_ will show you to your room. Oh-_kay?_"

Harry was already sort of regretting signing those papers. This woman thought _insane_ and _stupid_ were the same thing, which it definitely was not.

"Thanks," was all Harry could make himself say to her. He went down the hall and made the first right, like she'd said to do, and there was a set of double doors, the kind with the little windows with the criss-cross wires so someone didn't break it and jump out—like someone could fit through that tiny space, anyway. She didn't say anything about opening any door, and she was pretty specific with her directions. Harry actually wondered whether he should go through the door or not. Because she didn't say anything about opening any _door_.

He opened the door.

"Well, hello," said a short, pudgy male nurse, who was obviously still very young but was suffering from a dramatic receding hairline. Except for his black-rimmed glasses, his uniform was all a clean white, from his starched pants to his leather belt. He had two pre-loaded quills tucked away in his pocket, and both of those had white barrels, as well. "I've been expecting you, Mr. Potter." He presented himself to Harry with a completely blank expression on his face, which he wasn't sure if he felt bothered about or not.

"I'll show you to your room, and then you can walk about the place and meet all of the patients on men's ward," Mr. Bates said cheerily. "Now with you here, we've got seventy-two. Isn't that exciting?"

Was he being sarcastic?

Harry genuinely expected to see a long, dusty hallway, the walls painted gray and the floor ugly white tile, with a bunch of wild-eyed people shuffling around in loose-fitting hospital gowns—like mental institutions always looked in Muggle films. It wasn't anything like that, though. The floors were hardwood and the walls were a lovely burgundy color. And it was circular-looking, or _rounded_, rather, was the best way to describe it, not all square and uninviting.

There was a sitting area off to the right, a semicircular area cut into the wall, crammed full of overstuffed brown chairs and a couple love seasts, and even from this far away Harry could tell they were lined with microfiber. Perfectly normal-looking people wearing perfectly normal-looking clothes were curled up on the furniture over there, thumbing through books they'd gotten off the gigantic shelves resting against the wall. And one person was splayed across the oblong shag rug, warming himself in front of the hearty fireplace.

To the left was another sitting area mirroring the one across from it, except instead of a bookshelf and a roaring fire, the centerpiece in this one was a very nice widescreen Muggle television set someone had brought in. This area was considerably more popular than the other. People crammed themselves on all the furniture and propped their backs up _against_ the furniture and sat cross-legged in the floor watching it. Harry looked to see what they were all so intrigued in; they were watching a young Muggle woman on a cooking show cook food without the use of magic. Each time she'd use a blender or an electric mixer they would all gasp in unison. Harry couldn't help but smile.

But looking left, and looking right, there still weren't enough people here to make seventy-two. He guessed they were hidden away in their rooms, or—

"Here's where the majority of people spend their time during the day," Mr. Bates said, motioning his hands at either side of the room. "But we've also got a game room and a swimming pool further down. I suspect that's where most everyone else is today."

A swimming pool, in a mental facility? To Harry that sounded like they were just asking for trouble. But what did he know?

The two of them walked past both sitting areas and into a long, rectangular hallway—this was more what Harry pictured, but it wasn't menacing or foreboding at all—it still looked warm and homey, with photos of flowers lining the walls (undoubtedly held up by Permanent Sticking charms, so no one ripped it off the wall and murdered someone with the shards of glass). It was a bit like a hotel in the way that its doors were huge and solid, and there were gold numbers nailed to the outside of the door announcing the room number. Except none of these rooms had locks, only brass doorknobs.

"Obviously you'll be in Room 72, Harry," Mr. Bates said, quick to drop the formality of calling him _Mr. Potter_. "And do you see how these doors are sort of curved inward a bit? You see how door one is curved toward door two, and then on the other side of you how three is curved toward four, and so on? This is because we pair up our rooms so they're _adjoining_ with another, you get it? It's almost like having a roommate, except you can shut the door and have your privacy, if you like. We do this so all our patients make a new friend straight-off," he explained brightly.

Harry was led nearly to the end of the hall, to room number seventy-two, on the right side. Mr. Bates turned the knob—it wasn't locked—and led Harry inside.

It sort of reminded him of his room at Hogwarts, except for the fact that he didn't have to share it with anyone and the bed could easily hold three people—and Hogwarts never smelled so surgically clean. There was a bookshelf already filled with a number of volumes, but there was plenty of room left on the shelf to put his own, if he'd brought any—which he'd only taken the few he'd gotten as Christmas gifts from Hermione that he never read. The bed looked cushy, inviting, and stacked with pillows. There was a generously-sized writing desk tucked into one of the corners. The room was illuminated by a bright orange glow coming from two candles, one on the bedside table, one on the desk—both encased inside an impenetrable glass box, for his _safety_, he was sure.

"If you want the light off, just tell the orderly on duty," Mr. Bates said. "He'll come and snuff them out for you. And the receptionist took your wand at the front desk, correct?" Harry nodded.

"Good, good. There are anti-magic charms throughout this entire building, to protect anyone who might have haywire magic trouble. Also, anyone who knows wandless magic can't do anyone else any harm." He eyed Harry suspiciously.

"Come on, then, let's meet your new friend," he said, ushering Harry out in the hallway to stand in front of Room 71. Mr. Bates rapped at the door four times with his knuckles, just to be polite, and opened the door up anyway without waiting for a response from the person within.

A young man with sharply handsome features and white-blonde hair was sitting pertly in the center of his bed, a hardcover book splayed open in his lap. He didn't look up automatically, because he was probably used to intrusions of this sort, but when he finally did, his eyes widened into two big circles and a smirk snuck up the side of his face. He jabbed a bookmark into the pages and slapped the book shut with his knees.

"Well, well, _well_," the young man drawled, climbing out of bed, raking his eyes up and down Harry's body. "What do we have _here_?"

Harry didn't even know what to do with himself, he was in such shock. Malfoy, _here_? But _why_? And…_how_? It just didn't make any sense whatsoever, not even a little bit, _no_. It was like seeing Malfoy at a yard sale, or some other place he clearly didn't belong. Was he really seeing him, or was he going crazier than he thought?

"Draco, be nice," Mr. Bates said, putting a hand up for Draco to stop getting closer. "Harry came here for a rest, not to be hounded by his fans."

"_Fan_?" Draco said. "Not quite, _Jimmy_. We've met before." Draco raised his eyebrows at Harry in an _isn't that right Harry _manner.

"I've told you about using my first name, do it again and you lose your swimming and game room privileges," Mr. Bates said. "And is that true, Harry? The two of you've met before?"

So he supposed Malfoy really _was_ there, and it wasn't any case of mistaken identity because Mr. Bates had just called him Draco. And there were only a handful of _Draco_s in the world, period, but only one with white-blonde hair and daggery gray eyes and soft, thin, smirky lips.

"Yeah," Harry said, never taking his eyes off of Draco's, and vice-versa. "We've…met."

"_Splen_did!" Mr. Bates said. "Since you're already acquainted, Draco will show you the rest of the ward. You'll do that, won't you, Draco?"

"Certainly," Draco said silkily. "_Mr. _Bates."

Mr. Bates shook his head. "I hope I don't regret trusting you…" he muttered, leaving Harry and Draco alone in the room.

"What are _you_ here for?" Draco said. His tone was sharp, but the volume of his voice was even, which was confusing, because…was he trying to get a rise out of Harry, or was that just the way he talked? It'd been—what— two, three years since they'd spoken to one another? Harry couldn't remember how Draco talked, he just remembered he was generally…a git.

"I'd like to ask you the same thing," Harry said.

"That's for me to know and you to find out, _Har_ry," Draco said. He'd never called Harry by his first name in his life. Harry wasn't sure if he liked that or not.

"Then what makes you think I'm going to tell _you_ what's wrong with _me_?" Harry shot back.

Draco rolled his eyes. "I suppose we'll get to that later." He strolled about the room, Harry following the blonde with his eyes. "Let's see, first thing about this place…well, you know by now that none of the doors lock, right?"

Harry nodded.

"Not even the doors to the bathroom lock. But listen, a _closed _door is as good as a _locked_ door. If it's closed, don't go in without knocking. That way everybody gets their privacy. Get it?"

Harry nodded again, and Draco went over and opened up the door separating their rooms. "Wonder if your room looks like mine…?" he said over his shoulder, tromping into Harry's room.

"Hey, you can't just barge in there, Malfoy!" Harry said, following him in. "What about the whole _closed door_ bit?"

Draco turned around, lips slightly parted, eyes sparking with some kind of life that Harry couldn't read. "Oh, please, this is no place for formalities, just call me Draco," he said. He started walking backwards, surveying everything. Harry noticed his bags had arrived while he was gone, and were sitting on his bed.

"You've only brought three bags with you?" Draco said. "Well, I suppose everything you own _could _fit in just those, eh?"

"Mal—_Draco_, I don't know where you're getting off that I'm poor, but I assure you, I'm not. I'm not quite so lucky," he grimaced.

"Oh, that's right, you won that court case over the _Prophet _publishing those doctored photos of you doing _nasty_ things to young girls," Draco said. "I remember it was on the front page the first day I got newspaper privileges," Draco smirked.

"I—wait, you've been in here _that_ long?"

Draco's face turned bright pink. "It's not _that_ long…"

"It's been at _least_—"

"We're wasting time," Draco said, walking out into the hallway. "Let me show you round…"

Past Harry and Draco's adjoining rooms were more numbered doors, supposedly empty, numbered all the way up to 150. They walked past all of these, Harry close at Draco's heels, deciding he'd feel odd if he walked right next to him. At the end of the hall was a set of double doors, these too having those windows with the criss-cross wire barring, and Draco pushed them open.

They were in some kind of lobby-looking place. Up ahead was another set of doors, and to the right and left were doors made of glass and floor-to-ceiling windows that let you see everything going on inside from the outside.

"Obviously, that's the game room, and obviously, that's the pool," Draco explained, pointing lazily to each of them. Two people in the game room were playing a game of ping-pong. One person floated lazily by on an innertube in the swimming pool.

"Where is everyone?" Harry said.

Draco shrugged. "Probably in their rooms sulking. That's what I was doing—until the Golden Boy arrived, that is."

Draco led the way through the next set of doors. "And here we have the bathrooms," he said. Here were two single doors, both of them ajar.

"This one to the left leads to the toilets," Draco said. "And this one _here_ leads to the showers. And these are the only exceptions to the privacy rule. Don't ever shut these doors or they'll assume you're killing yourself or something in there."

"Right," Harry said.

"And ask a nurse for a razor when you need a shave. They have to watch you with it because they think you're going to cut your throat."

"How come they assume everybody's trying to kill themselves?" Harry said.

"Because a lot of the time, they are," Draco said darkly.

"Have you ever…actually _seen_ someone try?" Harry said. It was out of his mouth before he could actually think about what he was saying.

"Not personally, but the janitor went into the showers one morning just a few weeks ago, and he saw that someone had made a noose out of his robe sash and hung himself on the shower head," Draco said. "That's why you can't have those anymore. I guarantee when you unpack your things all of yours will be gone, they'll have looked through it and taken them all. That and all of your belts, necklaces, anything long and able to be tied into a knot will be gone. And they took my _manicure_ set away because I could jab someone's eye out with it, or something," Draco said dismally, splaying his fingers out in front of him and looking at his unpolished, unflatteringly short fingernails with a sour look on his face.

"But theoretically," Harry began morbidly, "couldn't you, say, tear strips out of your robes and use _that_ to hang yourself…?"

"One of the orderlies told me a guy in solitary chewed bits of his arm off and ate himself until he bled to death," Draco said matter-of-factly. Harry grimaced and muttered an _ughh_ sort of sound. "If you want to kill yourself badly enough, they can't stop you. I don't know why they have all those bloody rules to begin with, but what do_ I_ know, apparently I'm insane."

Harry couldn't help but laugh at that. Draco definitely wasn't insane—an inconsiderate, pompous _prat_, maybe, but not insane. He was just…troubled with something, like Harry was. Bus _what_ could it even be? It was going to drive Harry insane if he didn't figure it out. He supposed he could just tell Draco what was wrong with _him, _and…well, all in good time, maybe. Not just yet.

Draco sighed. "And that's basically all there is to see. But—" He checked his wristwatch, a beautiful silver thing with a thin band complementing his thin fingers. "It's about a half hour till dinner, you should go unpack your things and I'll walk you over to the cafeteria. You've got to go _back _out by the receptionist's desk, it's bloody _confusing_, and if you wander around lost they'll stuff you in solitary because they think you're being moody. I'd advise not going anywhere by yourself if you don't have to. Come on, then."

And with that, Draco turned on his heels and walked out, expecting Harry to follow him—which, of course, Harry did.

xxx

Harry ambled down the long buffet table, spooning mashed potatoes onto his plate. He looked down; so far he'd managed some green beans, mashed potatoes, a flaky dinner roll, and a goblet full of milk. It all smelled so delicious, but when he looked at it and pictured swallowing it, he didn't want it anymore. He _wanted_ to want to eat, but he couldn't make himself. Did that make sense? Probably not. He went to find Draco in the expanse of the cafeteria.

The place was gigantic, but everyone was peppered around comfortably. There were almost enough square tables for all seventy-two of them to sit alone, but so far Harry saw no one sitting by themselves. That struck him as weird. This didn't seem like a very social place to him, but he supposed it was.

Draco waved him over from a four-person table at the far end of the cafeteria. Harry gratefully walked over and sat down next to him. Draco was seated with two other people who wore expensive, vain clothes like he did, but the both of them combined wouldn't be as handsome as Draco was. Both of them seemed to know this, but had an air about them that they'd never admit it. One had only a goblet full of what looked like water, and the other was daintily picking apart a salad with a knife and fork.

But Draco was something else entirely. He'd balanced three plates on his tray, the two on the outermost edges tottering dangerously. He must have a helping of everything on the buffet, and Harry saw he even had_ two_ slices of steak and _two_ large piles of seasoned rice. His first two plates were standard dinner fare, and his third was piled high with dessert. Again, he must've gotten one of every kind of dessert as well, because he had cheesecake, some kind of chocolate cake layered with chocolate filling and coated with chocolate icing, two sugar cookies, and a spindling mound of soft-serve vanilla frozen yogurt. Draco's two friends kept shooting glances over at him, jealousy obviously burning in their eyes.

"There's no _way_ you're gonna eat all that," Harry said, amused.

Draco looked at him, his mouth full of a steak-potato-carrot combination he'd speared onto his fork. "Yes I can," he said, voice barely understandable filtering through all that food. He nodded his head enthusiastically.

"He can," said the friend with no food, sloshing his water around in his goblet. "Just watch him. It's unbelievable. I don't know where he puts it all."

"Oh, I don't either," said the friend with the salad. He had crisp American accent, which Harry loved. "All that food he's got on his place will go _straight_ to your ass on anybody else, but look at his ass, he's got such a nice ass."

"But what gets me is he's over there drinking _diet_ soda, like that's going to make some kind of difference," the foodless friend said. Draco laughed at that, cramming his fist to his lips to keep from spewing food everywhere. Harry laughed, too.

Draco swallowed everything in a hurry, cheeks a bit red. "Oh, right, Harry, introductions." He pointed to the American with the salad. "That's Brad." Then he pointed to the sulky one with the ravenous look in his eye and curly brown hair. "And that's Ricky."

"And we already know _you're_ Harry," Brad said, and Ricky gave a _mmhmm_ in agreement.

"Hullo…nice to meet you both" Harry said, hoping he sounded cheery enough. He watched Draco bemusedly as the blonde ate all sorts of unusual food combinations. He spooned frozen yogurt on top of his steak. He dipped his chocolate cake in ketchup. He tore his dinner roll open, stuffing it full of carrots and rice and sliced chicken, eating it all like a sandwich. And he even dipped _that_ in some mustard before he took a bite of it. He ate mechanically, systematically, like it was something he had to do. Harry never remembered him eating that much in Hogwarts, and he'd watched him _pret_ty closely during sixth year. While Harry pondered on that, and Brad ate his salad, and Ricky sipped at his water, Draco continued to eat. And before he knew it, everything was gone on Draco's plate and he was mopping up the juices with a piece of wheat bread.

"I love their food here," Draco said, smirking to himself.

"No shit," Brad said, and Ricky laughed and nodded his head.

"I can't believe you," Harry said, grinning.

"Oh, Brad, you've _got_ to tell Harry about Salem Academy. It's _noth_ing like Hogwarts, Harry, you'll love this," Draco said, sliding his tray to the center of the table to get it out of the way.

"Good Lord, where should I start? Oh, let me tell you about all the useless classes they made us take, I didn't learn _shit_ in school…"

And what Brad was saying really _was_ quite fascinating—what Harry managed to catch of it, anyhow. He was too busy studying Draco for much of it to trickle through. What had gotten into the blonde? Yes, there were still some parts of him that were pratty and mean, but he was actually having normal conversations with people who weren't worshipping the ground he walked on, like all his Slytherin friends did. Here he was, asking _other_ people to lead conversations, smiling and laughing in all the right places, looking _happy_ for once. How could it be that he was acting better inside the institution than out? Maybe therapy had helped him that much? Or was he making up for a problem buried deeper beneath the skin?

Harry was itching and squirming inside to find out.

* * *

**End Notes: **I made up words in this chapter, like 'pratty' and 'daggery' and 'smirky.' Oh, well.

And if you're wondering why they're not at St. Mungo's, that's going to be explained in another chapter. There's not just some random institution out in the middle of nowhere for seemingly no reason, don't worry. :P


	2. Chapter 2

**Warnings: **This story is primarily written to be a Drarry, or a HPDM, or Harry/Draco, whatever you like to call it. But it's a slow-burner, meaning they're not going to fall in love and have sex with each other overnight. Because that's just ridiculous. And I hate it when stories do that.

This story will also have a lot of suggestive themes in it, such as depictions of different disorders, self-harm, male/male relationships, etc. I'm not going to go into a terrible amount of detail about a lot of it, but I've given it a rating of M all the same as a just-in-case. If you don't like it, please don't read it, because...you won't like it.

**Author's Note: **Chapter 1 of this story was ridiculously long, but I had to get a lot of technical stuff out of the way, like what it looks like on the inside and how the place is run and everything. I think a lot of people got bored reading all that jargon, so I'm going to be cutting the chapters a little short from here on out. Expect about 2500-3000 words per chapter now.

And I know this story isn't very popular, but I'm going to write it anyway because I really like it. :P

* * *

"There's something peculiar about you that all the orderlies have noticed, Draco," Dr. Moss said, lacing his fingers together and resting them on the wood of his desk. He'd long since stopped jotting notes on his pad about the blonde sitting across from him, body draped over the couch like fine linen. He wasn't getting any more useful information out of him with his general questions he used for most of the rest of his patients. He'd have to try another tactic. He stared over his glasses at Draco.

"Yeah?" Draco said, trying to feign interest. "And what might that be?"

"They all seem to be telling me that you're eating an excessive amount of food at meal hours, but every time you come in for a checkup you stay the exact same weight, or sometimes even less."

"I suppose I've just got a high metabolism, Dr. Moss," Draco said.

"Well, that could be the case…but do you know what a _much_ more likely cause for you to stay the same weight would be?"

Draco eyed him with mock interest. "No." Draco knew this trick. Shrinks didn't want to tell their patients what was wrong with them—no, they wanted _you_ to say it, because that's what you call _progress_. But Draco wasn't much in the mood for that today. He'd toy with Dr. Moss for a bit, and then his time would be up, and then he could have swimming pool races with Harry. That sounded good. _Much _better than talking about something that might not even exist—_didn't _exist, he didn't have a problem, he had control.

"When people eat as much as you do, Draco—and I know it's a lot, because all the orderlies have told me the same story, I assure you—they sometimes feel a need to…get _rid_ of the food they eat before their body absorbs it and makes them gain weight. And that's what you do, isn't it? After you eat, you get rid of it all?"

"I'm not so sure what you're talking about," Draco said with a smirk. "Would you care to elaborate?"

"Let me ask you this first—do you get a sense of satisfaction, maybe a feeling of accomplishment when you eat as much as you do?"

"Are you asking me if I _like_ eating, Doctor?"

"Sure."

"Well, of course I do." Smirk.

"But after you eat, where does it all go? It's got to go _some_where."

"I'm not sure, Doctor."

"Your medical records say—" Dr. Moss started, his voice raising slightly, a trick he learned in college to gently intimidate. "—that you have enlarged glands in your neck. But what's strange about that is that you don't have any lacerations around your throat or your mouth."

Draco still acted like he wasn't getting it, though Dr. Moss knew he was dealing with a very intelligent young man. He pressed on.

"So tell me, Draco…after you've eaten all of that food, and you're bent over the toilet making yourself vomit, what do you use to gag yourself? It couldn't be your fingers. Because of the absence of lacerations, as I said before. You're being very careful not to leave any evidence, aren't you?"

Draco smiled a tiny smile. "I don't believe I know what you're talking about, Dr. Moss," he said softly.

Dr. Moss scribbled '_bulimia nervosa—no desire to improve' _onto his pad and told Draco he was free to go.

xxx

Harry cracked his eyes open. Instinctively he looked round for sunlight pouring in through a window to guess at what time it was, but he forgot there were no windows in this place…except for on some of the doors.

He had the best sleep he'd gotten in ages last night. The wild magic he had inside him was still buzzing in his fingertips, but now it felt—how could he even describe it—_restrained_. It didn't feel like it could just _burst_ out of him at any given moment. He figured that was the facility's anti-magic wards at work. He probably stayed asleep longer because his magic wasn't waking him up.

Most days when he woke up he would lie there, and lie there, and lie there some more, contemplating if it was really worth getting up and brushing his teeth and making breakfast for himself and forcing himself to socialize with his friends. But today he felt ready, like he was going to make something great happen. He grabbed his glasses off of his bedside table, dressed quickly into a tee shirt and jeans, and went off to the bathroom—as do most people when they first wake up.

He emptied his bladder, and while washing his hands in the basin he noticed the unflattering stubble on his face. He splashed some water on it, like that was going to help anything. He looked at his dismal reflection for awhile longer before he heard someone deliberately clearing their throat in behind him.

Harry looked round, and a tall, lanky nurse with a long face was sitting in the corner of the room in a chair, a paperback clutched in his hand. "Need a shave, Mr. Potter?" the nurse asked.

"Er—" Harry said, but the nurse had already dogeared his page and was crossing the room with a bar of soap and a disposable razor in hand. "'Ere you go," the nurse said cheerily, thrusting them into Harry's hands.

The nurse sat back down, resuming his book, but kept flicking his eyes back to Harry, making sure he didn't try anything. Harry ran the soap under the water and smoothed it across his face—albeit awkwardly because he always used shaving cream at home—and ran the razor down and across and diagonal on his face, feeling the roughness of the cheap blade and the flimsiness of the cheap soap that refused to lather. The nurse's eyes on him made him feel incredibly uncomfortable. Like he'd be able to slash his neck with _this _dull thing anyhow.

"Ouch…" he muttered, nicking himself, and the nurse sat bolt upright in his chair, eyes wide.

"It's fine. I'm fine," Harry said, splashing water into his face, which he was fairly certain would soon develop razor burn since he didn't have the creature comforts of aftershave, either.

"You all done?" the nurse said as he walked over, but before Harry could answer he yanked the soap and razor out of his hands. "And here's a Band-Aid. For your face, there," he added, handing Harry a bandage. He stuck it on his face as quickly as possible and skirted out of the bathroom and away from the nurse's relentless gaze, eager to get as far away as possible.

He got back to his room and noticed that the door adjoining to Draco's room was opened a tiny crack. A closed door was as good as a locked door, right? So an open door…

He swung the door open the rest of the way, stepping tentatively into the room. Draco was pertly seated at a chair in front of a vanity, running a comb through his fine hair. He caught a glimpse of Harry in the mirror and the corners of his mouth upturned ever-so-slightly.

"About time you woke up," Draco said.

"What time is it?" Harry asked.

"Eleven."

Harry laughed. "Missed breakfast, didn't I?"

"The most important meal of the day, Scarhead."

"I'm sure you had enough breakfast for both of us, anyhow."

Draco smirked at that, brushing his bangs out of his eyes and over to the side.

"So, er—" Harry began, sitting on the edge of Draco's bed, still watching him brush his hair, even though every hair on his head was already perfectly in place. "What are we supposed to do all day?"

"Have they not made you an appointment with the _won_derful Dr. Moss yet?" Draco said, setting his comb down for an aerosol can of cologne, which he sprayed in an arc across his chest—they weren't allowed to have any glass containers, lest they break it against someone's skull.

"Who's Doctor Moss?"

"You've got to go in and talk to him once a week so he can help you _weed_ through your problems, or some nonsense. He's supposed to keep you for an hour, but he never does." Now Draco was rubbing some sort of cream on his face. "The longest he's kept me in his office is fifteen minutes. Moisturizer," Draco added after glancing over and catching Harry's puzzled look at what he was doing.

"But," Draco said, standing up, grabbing a powder-blue cashmere cardigan off of the back of his chair and slipping it on, even though it wasn't cold. "We've got group at five, right before dinner. You're going to _love _that," he said, grimacing. "But if you don't have an appointment today we can do whatever we want. Let's go see what everybody's up to." He left the room, and Harry felt he had no choice but to follow him.

Most of the rooms they passed had their doors slightly ajar. "Why does everyone have their doors open today?" Harry asked quietly, walking at Draco's side.

"Lonely, I suppose," Draco said. "Probably hoping someone'll come inside and visit with them."

Harry thought that was awfully sad.

They walked down the row of doors until they came to doors 51 and 52, which were also open a smidge. Draco pushed door 51 open and went inside without announcing himself. Harry hesitated, hovering in the doorway.

"Oh, come on, Harry, it's just Brad," he said, grabbing his wrist and dragging him inside. Draco was kind of acting like Harry was his best chum all of a sudden, or something. It made Harry feel weird. But rather gitty old Draco than no one at all, he supposed.

His fingers were firm and cold. Pianist's fingers, Harry thought absently. He looked down at them, and they were pale, long, bony. Was it weird to think someone had beautiful hands? He let himself be dragged wherever Draco thought it keen to drag him.

Brad was splayed on his bed, Ricky beside him. This room was packed full of knickknacks, like Draco's room, except his were mostly Muggle-made and therefore took on a cheap, thrift store look here. His bookshelf was packed full of books Harry couldn't quite glimpse the titles of. He had a stack of Muggle board games, some Harry remembered Dudley having back at Privet drive that he was never allowed to touch. Dirty magazines littered his floor. Harry watched as the men on the cover of the Wizarding magazines winked and blew kisses at him, while the men on the Muggle magazines stared at him sexily, motionless. There were two posters on his wall—one of the Wizarding world's newest pop singer bringing his shoulders forward and back, gyrating his hips from side to side, running his fingers through his mane of hair, wearing nothing but a pair of tight jeans. Beside it was a nonmoving Muggle poster of a blonde woman Harry didn't recognize, but below her face the words LADY GAGA were printed in large blue letters.

Peculiar.

"Dr. Moss kept you a lot longer today," Ricky remarked. Draco plopped down on a love seat in the corner of Brad's room, dragging Harry down with him, his hand still clamped onto Harry's arm.

"I know, he wouldn't stop badgering me with questions today," Draco muttered. Apparently he'd forgotten about having a hold of Harry because his fingers were still loosely curled around his wrist. Harry could pull away, he supposed, but…

He sat there a moment, then something very…_off _started happening. He could _see _Draco and Brad and Ricky carrying on a conversation, and they knew they were making words, but he couldn't understand them. They sounded muffled, like he was eavesdropping on them through a closed door. Everything in his line of vision suddenly became very bright and vivid, taking on a yellowish tint. He could see so sharply that there was no doubt in his mind that if he were to take off his glasses, he could see perfectly, absolutely perfectly. And the room kept getting hotter and hotter…

With his free hand, he wiped the sweat that had beaded on his brow. Their speech was becoming fainter and fainter sounding in his ears. Something was wrong, very, _very _wrong.

Draco's hand shot away from Harry's arm—because it had scalded him. His bored, aggravated features turned to alarmed. If his face hadn't been so descriptive, Harry wouldn't have known what was going on, because he couldn't hear anything anymore. But his vision was so _perfect_.

"Harry?" Draco said. Brad and Ricky both shot up in bed, their faces matching Draco's. "Are you—?"

A trickle of blood dripped down from each of Harry's ears. Suddenly he became very lightheaded, and the last thing he remembered seeing was Draco's hand reaching out to grab him as he slumped forward.

xxx

Harry had been in the infirmary all day. Draco felt disconnected for the rest of the day, ghosting around here and there, not staying anywhere for too long. He couldn't make himself sit down, but he didn't want to see anyone, either. The only time he stopped in one place was group, which he was forced to go to, where he didn't even utter a word—and dinner, where he ate until it was physically impossible for him to take in any more.

Highs and lows. When Harry came he was high, and now he was low. Very, very low.

Draco shouldn't be here. Harry had a _real _problem he couldn't control. His temperature spiking and blood gushing from his ears was _definitely _not voluntary. Now, Draco's problem…it was all his decision. He could control it. He _should _control it. He was perfectly capable of making a conscious decision to stop.

His knees smacked against the tile of the bathroom floor, fingers trembling, a toothbrush clutched in his hand. Now, wasn't that convenient? Throw your guts up, using the toothbrush to gag yourself, and that way you don't accidentally scratch your throat with your nails, and you've got something to scrub your mouth out with afterwards! Draco thought himself clever for thinking of that. He used to use a Puking Pastille, or a Nausea charm when he was in a pinch, but all magical candies were banned from the facility, and obviously he couldn't do any magic here. But then he thought of the toothbrush one night when his stomach was full to bursting and he hadn't made any progress since.

He _could _get better though. If he actually put forth the effort.

He'd try and get better tomorrow, on an empty stomach.

* * *

**End Notes: **I didn't put any 'suggested listening' because I think I'm just going to put all my songs on so you all can peruse them at your leisure. :P


	3. Chapter 3

**Warnings: **This story is primarily written to be a Drarry, or a HPDM, or Harry/Draco, whatever you like to call it. But it's a slow-burner, meaning they're not going to fall in love and have sex with each other overnight. Because that's just ridiculous. And I hate it when stories do that.

This story will also have a lot of suggestive themes in it, such as depictions of different disorders, self-harm, male/male relationships, etc. I'm not going to go into a terrible amount of detail about a lot of it, but I've given it a rating of M all the same as a just-in-case.

**Author's Note: **I thought it'd been an eternity since I'd updated anything, but I think it may have only been about a week...which is good. For those of you that follow my other story, I'll work on it next. I wanted to update this one twice in a row because I had an idea for it. Also, I'm writing something completely of my own creation, which I'm pretty excited about. So now I've got _three _projects going. My grandma says if I don't get carpal tunnel syndrome I'll get arthritis. She's probably right. All I do is write stories and write notes for class. Ha.

_Plussss! _If you're a feeemale, listen up! I was on and they have these cute tee shirts that are black with a white collar/tie/house crest design printed on it, to make it look like you're wearing a Hogwarts uniform! They come in Gryffindor and Slytherin colors. I bought one. Finally, Hot Topic found out it's a really good idea to sell bigger sizes in their girl clothes. :/ I bought one in Slytherin colors! You all should get one too! :D

* * *

When Harry finally came to, his first feeling was confusion. He was in a hospital bed, he knew that. Did they transport him to St. Mungo's? No, this place didn't look like St. Mungo's, it was much less plain, with potted plants everywhere and a generous smattering of those Permanent Sticking paintings with pretty girls strolling about lazily in their frames. The walls were a mellow pink color. Harry remembered reading in one of Hermione's coffee table magazines that pink was the most calming color and they used it in a lot of places where stress ran high to make people feel more at ease. Harry wasn't sure if it was _calming _him or not, but it did make the place look a lot less…hospital-y.

He could hear footsteps traipsing back and forth in front of his door, which meant his hearing was back. He reached a hand up to readjust his glasses, but he was surprised to discover that they weren't on his face at all, but lying on the bedside table. His vision was still a little blurry, but it was almost as good now as it would be with his glasses on. His vision was no longer frighteningly sharp, like it had been before he blacked out, but it hadn't reverted all the way—which Harry didn't much mind. Just out of curiosity he reached over and put his glasses on. Everything was blurrier. With a small sigh he sat them back down on the table.

About fifteen minutes passed by where he simply stared at the ceiling, feeling nothing except the air go in and out of his lungs—no more tingling in his fingertips, thank God. After a time though a plump witch in a crisp, pale pink nurse's uniform bustled in, pushing a card full of all sorts of phials and bottles and jars.

"Mr. Potter," she said crisply and brightly. "Glad to see you're wide awake now."

"How long have I been…asleep?" Harry asked her.

"You were admitted yesterday at 11:30, and now it's about 9:00 today," she said. "Just overnight, dear, not to worry." Harry nodded.

She pulled out a clipboard, pre-loaded quill poised over the paper. "Now, are you noticing any adverse effects? Headaches, nausea, anything of the sort?"

"Well…I can see better."

"You can see _better_?"

"Yeah. It's still blurry, but…it's better. And when I put my glasses on it makes it worse."

"Ah, so we'll need to get you a new prescription, then," she scribbled on her pad.

"Er…if you don't mind my asking," Harry said. "What exactly happened to me?"

"You had what we call a 'magic overload,' dear. It's where your magic builds up inside of you, and since it can't get out through the wards, it affects your inside instead of your outside."

"But wouldn't that be _more _dangerous? To keep it in, instead of let it out?"

"Not for the people around you, Mr. Potter," she said darkly, and Harry raised his eyebrows in surprise. She turned around to her cart and grabbed two phials out of it. "Here you go, take these. I'll send the doctor in to see you shortly. _Do _try to lie back and relax while you wait," she said, shouting the last bit behind her shoulder as she wheeled her cart back out the door.

The first potion tasted like bubblegum, the second like wintergreen. The combination of those two flavors hitting his empty stomach was nauseating. He lay back, trying his best to _relax_, but now he just felt like vomiting. He turned over on his side, burying his face in the regrettably thin hospital pillow, trying to think of something other than being sick to his stomach. It didn't really work.

"Ah, Mr. Potter!" someone called. Harry cracked his eyes open and could make out an older man with salt-and-pepper hair and a bushy mustache, but not many other finer details than that. _At least this guy sounds happy,_ Harry thought. _The nurse sounded like I was being some huge burden on her._ _Like I did this on purpose._

"I'm Dr. Oliver, I'll be having a look at your eyes…" the man said, looming over Harry.

"Oh, I'll—" Harry went to shuffle into the sitting position, but the doctor signaled for him to lie back down. The doctor jabbed his wand in between Harry's eyes, and Harry felt a very unpleasant warm sensation spreading from the doctor's wandpoint all over his head.

"Almost done, there, Mr. Potter," Dr. Oliver tittered. He raised his wand away from Harry's face, a tendril of red semismoke trailing from its tip. Harry was vaguely reminded of the times Dumbledore extracted memories from his head to go into the Pensieve, but it wasn't exactly the same. The doctor pulled a pair of glasses from his pocket—square-framed glasses with black plastic rims, much more modern than his old pair—and touched his wand to each frame, the red substance seeming to absorb into the glass.

"Here you are, then," Dr. Oliver said, giving Harry the glasses. Harry put them on and he was simply amazed with how much better he could see. It was like looking at a whole new world. He never knew his eyesight was really that—_blurry. _But then again, his old glasses were just something from the dime store Aunt Petunia had been merciful enough to buy for him when he was young. He'd never had his eyes checked by an actual eye doctor. And he supposed a Wizarding eye doctor would be even more accurate than a Muggle one, anyhow.

"Wow," Harry muttered, looking round. "Thanks."

"Of course, Mr. Potter," Dr. Oliver said. "You're free to go now, just follow the signs on the wall, you'll be able to get back down to your room just fine, I should think…I should be going now. Until next time, Mr. Potter." The doctor raised his hand in a sort of half-wave and skirted out of the room much like the nurse had—abruptly and with an air of impatience.

Harry got to his feet slowly, his legs feeling wobbly and his head aching. He felt like he'd been put through a blender, yes, but he'd never been one for watching the dust motes float by in a hospital bed. He racked his brain for what happened last—he remembered going into _some_one's room—he didn't think it was Draco's, but he couldn't quite remember—and then this unbearable pain in his head, and Draco's face contorted in alarm. He needed to find Draco and ask him what happened.

"Follow the signs on the wall," he muttered to himself. He saw a sign that read:

MEN'S WARD ►

◄ WOMEN'S WARD

And it was amazing how clear the letters were. He didn't know the alphabet could _be _so clear. When he had his old glasses he knew other people's vision must be better than his, but…he didn't think _anybody's _could be this good. He wanted to go up to the sign and rake his hands across it, just to match a texture with sight. But he thought that would probably earn him a nice, long nap in the place Draco kept calling "solitary."

He followed the signs until he finally made it back to the pool slash game room area, where he could find his own way without their help. When he walked into the hallway of patients' doors, he found his own to be shut, but Draco's was open a crack. Harry knocked weirdly on the door, which caused it to creak open a bit. Harry thought that was as good an announcement as any. He stepped into the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

"You're almost as pale as I am, Harry," Draco murmured. He was curled up in his blankets, lying on his side, reading the same book he had when Harry first arrived, but now he was about three-quarters of the way through with it. "Sit." Draco patted the mattress beside him.

Harry clambered onto the bed, resting his back against the dozens of pillows Draco had—he supposed if you asked one of the nurses for pillows they'd bring you more? He only had two on his bed.

"You don't have to lie on top of the bedspread like that," Draco murmured, not looking up from his book. "You can get under the covers. It's not weird. Not here. People do it all the time."

"Er—all right," Harry said, doing just that, burrowing himself into the pillow-and-blanket nest Draco had made. Each of them laid a side of their face onto a pillow and faced each other.

Draco put a placemarker in his book and shut it. He looked at Harry, and Harry nearly gasped. It was the first time actually seeing Draco up-close with his new glasses. Draco's eyes…even though they had faint dark circles underneath them, his smoke-gray irises looked like he had embedded them with tiny, glistening diamonds. They were…_brilliant_.

Was that a weird thing to think about your former enemy? Harry was pretty sure it was.

"Nice glasses. _Much _better than the old pair," Draco said, which jarred Harry's mind back into the present.

"Oh. Thanks," Harry said, a bit shocked that Draco had paid him a compliment. "The only good part about all of this was that somehow…my eyes got a bit better."

"What was wrong with you?" Draco asked.

"My haywire magic. Since there are anti-magic wards everywhere it just…built up inside of me and couldn't get out. So I fainted."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "You're lucky you didn't die."

"I know," Harry said.

"Wait," Draco said. "If they know it's dangerous for your magic to be held inside of you like that…then _why _did they move you here and not to St. Mungo's?"

"Er…lots of reasons, I think. For one, I've got…well, I've got severe depression. You know, it's like I wake up in the morning and—"

"You just want to go right back to sleep, I know," Draco said, and for a second Harry saw something akin to sympathy flicker in the blonde's eyes.

"Right," Harry said, thankful Draco at least knew what _that _was like. "But also because they don't offer the same rehabilitation St. Mungo's does for haywire magic. It's not a physical disorder. It's mental. There's not a lot St. Mungo's can do for it, so…they sent me here. My doctor told me they've got great magic control programs here."

"So have they _enrolled _you in any of these magic control programs yet?" Draco asked.

"No," Harry said. "Not yet."

"So in the meantime, they're just going to let you blow yourself up?" Draco snapped. "Rubbish. Talk to someone about this before you kill yourself."

"I suppose I should, huh?" Harry said, tittering. "Er—Draco," he began, trying to choose his words carefully. "What sort of…programs are _you _enrolled in here?"

Draco just stared at him for some moments, mulling it over in his brain, or so it seemed, trying to think what he wanted to tell Harry and what he didn't. Finally, he spoke, his face clearly disheartened.

"Ah…I'm not so sure I want to tell you yet," Draco murmured, fidgeting with a wrinkle in the bedsheet. But he never once broke his gaze with Harry.

"Come on," Harry said. "I won't tell anyone." He tittered again. "Well, obviously I won't. There's no one in here to tell."

"I know that, but…" Draco said. "It's just, for whatever reason, we're not…_fighting_. I guess it's because we're in a different atmosphere, or…I don't know. Maybe we've both just grown up a bit since...we last met. But I don't want to go mucking it up again so quickly. I think maybe it's best you didn't know."

Harry's eyes widened. "You're not…a _rapist_ or something are you, Dra—"

"_No! _God. No." Draco squeezed his eyes shut, because he couldn't very well shake his head in disagreement with half of it pressed against a pillow. "Nothing like that. I'm sick, but not _sick_, sick."

"Then you should just tell me what it is. Then you can talk about it. To me," Harry said pointedly. "Might make you feel a bit better."

"I think if you paid a bit more attention you could figure it out pretty easily," Draco said bitterly. "It's hard to be secretive here."

"I could follow you around again like I did in sixth year," Harry said, then bit his tongue immediately after the sentence left his lips. _Damn it all_.

"Huh?" Draco said.

"Well—it's like this…" Harry began to explain, and the whole subject of Draco's problem was lost.

xxx

If Harry had to guess, it was about one or two in the morning when a pair of icy hands clenching at his arm withdrew him from a deep sleep.

"_Harry_," a voice that he could barely recognize as Draco's rasped. "_Harry._"

"_Incendio_," Harry murmured simply out of habit. He could perform simple spells with wandless magic, and that's what he used to say back home to light the candles on his bedside table when he woke up during the night. To his amazement, the candle by his bed roared to life, and Draco's body came into view.

Even without his glasses he could tell that something was wrong. He grabbed for his glasses on the bedside table and jammed them onto his head. He was horrified.

Draco was shaking and sobbing, clutching his stomach. There was blood all over his shirt and pants, and for one terrifying moment Harry thought Draco's stomach had exploded. But Draco gagged, and a neat arc of blood spewed from his mouth like a fountain, splattering all over Harry's lap and bedsheets.

"Oh my God," was all Harry could manage to say before he jumped up and put a supportive arm around Draco's shoulder. Draco was swaying—he was about to pass out. Harry scooped him up damsel-in-distress style and rushed him to the nurse's station, his ears filled with Draco's sickening gasps for breath.

* * *

**End Notes: **All right. Up there, where I described the "MEN'S WARD/WOMEN'S WARD" signs, I inserted those sideways triangles so they could point the direction, like a real sign would. But Fanfiction has this thing where, if you upload a piece of code it doesn't like, it'll just omit it, leaving a blank spot where something IMPORTANT used to be. I imagine these triangles will disappear, but I'm willing to give it a shot. If they do disappear, the men's ward is to the right, the women's to the left. Imagine your own arrows! Fun! :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Warnings: **This story is primarily written to be a Drarry, or a HPDM, or Harry/Draco, whatever you like to call it. But it's a slow-burner, meaning they're not going to fall in love and have sex with each other overnight. Because that's just a little bit ridiculous. And I hate it when stories do that.

This story will also have a lot of suggestive themes in it, such as depictions of different disorders, self-harm, male/male relationships, etc. I'm not going to go into a terrible amount of detail about a lot of it, but I've given it a rating of M all the same as a just-in-case.

**Author's Note: **I'm taking an Intro to Psychology class and I love it. Not the class itself, because I have to climb three flights of stairs and there's no air conditioner or heating (just three ceiling fans) and there's 70 other kids in there that never stop talking, but the subject itself. I got a lot of the ideas for this chapter from my class notes and my textbook. Haha. :P

* * *

Draco's breath was coming in raspy little moans as he clenched at his midsection. He must have screwed his stomach up once and for all that night. It was, without question, one of the worst pains he'd ever felt in his life. He would be more concerned about what, exactly, was wrong with him, if he wasn't too busy swallowing back mouthfuls of blood.

He was sitting on the edge of a hospital bed. The nurses instructed him to lie down, but he couldn't, he just couldn't. He felt like if he unfolded himself from his doubled-over position, it would cause whatever had torn up inside him to become that much worse. Sweat started to mist his face. He couldn't take much more of this.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Malfoy?" a wizard who was presumably the doctor said as he swept into the room.

"Like shit," Draco said through his teeth.

"Let's have a look at you. Lean back," he said, prodding Draco's shoulder. Draco swung his feet over and very gingerly rested his back on the hard surface of the hospital bed.

"Vomiting blood, I see," the doctor said. "Are you experiencing any pain and discomfort in the abdominal area?"

"_Yeeeesssss-ssss_," Draco groaned.

"I see. All right then," the doctor said, sounding gradually more bored as the analysis progressed. "Tell me where it hurts…"

He stuck his index and middle fingers together and used them to jab at Draco's stomach. It hurt about as much as you could expect someone jabbing two fingers into your stomach could hurt, but it wasn't really anyth—

"_Fffffuck_!" Draco gasped, shooting up in bed as the doctor's fingers had mercilessly ploughed right into the source of the problem, whatever it was. He hissed in pain, screwing his eyes shut tight, resuming rocking back and forth, trying to get the steadily spiderwebbing hurt under control. He was fighting not to cry. He had seldom cried because he was in sheer pain, but he may have to give in tonight if things don't get better…

"Ah," the doctor said, loud enough to be heard over Draco's ragged groans. "You've ruptured a blood vessel in your stomach, Mr. Malfoy. _Multiple _blood vessels, I'd imagine, given the vast quantity of blood you've been projectile vomiting everywhere…"

"Is that bad?" he asked in a childishly meek voice, eyes wide.

"No, no, not entirely…the nurse can give you a potion that can heal it right up," the doctor said with detached consolation. With a flush of white robes, he left the room, the door shutting quietly behind him.

Draco's chest was heaving and his forehead was so sweaty it was ridiculous. He felt weak with the sudden loss of blood. Black spots started blocking parts of his vision, and for a few horrifying moments he thought he was dying, his entire body growing cold, left arm aching; he'd reach over to rub at it to try and make the soreness go away, but he didn't dare pry his hands away from guarding his stomach. No, he tried to tell himself, he was just having your garden-variety panic attack. But it didn't feel like a panic attack. It felt like he was _dy_ing.

He groaned loudly, kicking his feet into the mattress.

Finally, after a good _thirty years _of waiting, a nurse waddled in, medicine cart in tow.

"Sit up, please, Mr. Malfoy," she said tersely, and even through all of this Draco was still meticulous enough to notice that she had orange-red lipstick stained on her two front teeth.

Sit up, lie back, sit up, lie back, would they just _pick one_? With a great amount of difficulty, he leaned himself up, wincing at the abnormal stretching feeling it caused in his gut.

Apparently things like this were a common problem in her line of work because she knew exactly what potion she needed without reading its label. "Drink these please," the nurse instructed, handing the bottles to him. He unscrewed their caps and forced them down his throat, even though the image of any form of liquid going down his throat and hitting all of those ruptured blood vessels made him cringe. One tasted like bubblegum, the other like wintergreen. The combination of those two flavors was shockingly revolting.

The pain had lessened—slightly. He felt a weird sensation in his stomach, like things might be reattaching themselves. He still hurt, but he felt better enough to uncurl his body and remove his hands from his midsection.

"Better?" the nurse said, but before Draco could mouth a reply, she grabbed his arm and hoisted him to his feet. "You'll be having a little checkup in the mental evaluation ward now," she said, guiding him out the door.

Medical evaluation ward…the name sounded familiar, like he should know what it was, but it didn't come to mind.

"I can walk myself, thanks," Draco said, trying to tug his arm out of the nurse's grasp, but she dug her long, painted nails into Draco's arm; they left four little crescent shapes denting his skin.

"Are we going to have a problem, Mr. Malfoy?" the nurse whispered in his ear. In normal circumstances, Draco would have yanked his arm away, said some very colorful words to her, and marched away with his nose in the air. But here, 'having a problem' meant 'calling the security guard on night watch to jab a needle into your arm and throw you in solitary.' He didn't need any of that, he surely didn't. He simply shook his head and let himself be pulled along down the hallway.

The nurse pushed open a set of double doors, and they were in a part of the ward that Draco had never been in before. The lush carpet was replaced with old, cracking tile in alternating pea-green and soft yellow, caked with dirt. The walls were solid white—or they used to be when they were first painted, anyway. Now they were dingy and stained with things Draco didn't want to know the origin of. Candelabras lined the walls, and weak candles burned bright yellow. No more homey hotel doors, either—these were all metal doors with huge mesh-barred windows at the front. There was absolutely nothing to hide behind them.

It was like they had opened a door and stepped back through time.

Draco looked through the mesh-barred windows as he passed. One was entirely empty, except for a man in a hospital gown standing in the center of the room. Out of nowhere, he burst into flame, his skin bubbling and charring—and all of a sudden it stopped, and the fire subsided, and his body healed itself. Draco managed to catch the cycle repeating before it passed out of his line of vision.

Another room had no furniture in it, except for a little girl with long, cornsilk hair, also dressed in nothing but a hospital gown. She reminded Draco of what Luna Lovegood probably looked like when she was a young. She was floating about eight feet in the air, smiling contentedly, a smattering of blood at the corner of her mouth, her limbs billowing out in front of her. Her eyes snapped open as she fell a few feet, but she slowly lifted herself back up into the air.

_They can't control their magic,_ Draco thought to himself. _This is where you go if you can't control your magic. Why am I…?_

He actually let out a little gasp at what he saw in through the next door. It was his American friend Brad, his wrists, ankles, midsection, and forehead strapped and buckled to a hospital bed. He was struggling fitfully against his bindings. A doctor came into view beside him, reaching a hand out to still his head, gripping Brad's chin with a large hand. He took a long, thin metal rod that looked very similar to an ice pick and positioned it over Brad's left eye socket. Next the doctor took a small tool out of his pocket and started hammering the rod down into Brad's brain, the ice pick tool steadily becoming buried in Brad's skull. At first Brad screamed hoarsely, his entire body fighting to get out of his restraints, but as the ice pick tool got deeper and deeper, he relaxed more and more and his screams got quieter and quieter, until his eyes glazed over and he was staring dumbly at the ceiling. Draco was lingering, mouth agape, trying to watch more of this sadistic procedure, but he received a forceful yank from the nurse that nearly took his arm out of socket. With heavy feet he continued walking.

"What are you going to do to me?" Draco asked weakly. Apparently this place wasn't only for people with haywire magic—it was also people with _no desire to improve_.

"We're going to try you on some electroconvulsive therapy," the nurse said smugly. "Maybe then you'll try a bit harder to control your binging, Mr. Malfoy."

If Draco had been raised as a Muggle and had been aware of the prefix _electro_, he probably would have been in hysterics. He was blissfully unaware, however. "But I thought there were anti-magic wards set up here," Draco murmured.

"Who said anything about using magic?" the nurse said, and her professionalism had completely dissolved. She gave Draco a wicked smile, her lipstick-stained teeth flashing in the yellow candlelight. She yanked open a door at the end of the hall and dragged Draco inside.

There was a hospital bed with straps and, behind it, a very peculiar-looking thing making buzzing and whirring sounds that Draco wanted no part of. Four doctors loomed ominously around the bed, their hands outstretched and at the ready. Then it dawned on him: they were there because they knew he would fight tooth and nail against being strapped down. Fight or flight, Draco, fight or flight? It appeared his hypothalamus in his brain couldn't quite make up its mind. Fight or flight? Fight or flight?

Perhaps both.

He jerked his arm out of the nurse's grip, whipped around, and jiggled the door handle; but it was locked. He turned around, his back pressed against the door, and reached for his wand—oh, wait, he didn't have his wand! Fancy that! His wand hand jerked impatiently at his side, wanting to desperately reach up and fire curses at the four doctors stealthily closing in on him.

He felt hands all over him. He didn't know who grabbed what, but he did know that his feet were off the ground and they were all trying desperately to grab at his arms, to keep them still. Draco fought and struggled like his life depended on it—because in this place, it probably did, and there was no use taking chances. He managed to get one of his arms free, and used it to punch the doctor holding his other arm square in the nose. The doctor yowled in pain, clutching his bleeding nose, and now Draco had both of his arms. He tried to hit at the doctors subduing his legs, but he couldn't quite reach their faces so just knocked at their arms, which didn't seem to faze them much. For one glorious moment he got one of his legs loose; he tried to connect it with ground so he could try to crawl away. A doctor quickly grabbed it up again, though, holding Draco's leg close to his chest.

"Move him to the table, move him to the table," one of the doctors said hurriedly. The large, squirming group shuffled over to the hospital bed and got into position, like they'd done this a hundred times before. Perhaps they really had.

Draco's adrenaline was starting to kick in. He fought even harder. He fought and fought against them until it ran out and his muscles fatigued, which felt like an incredibly long time, but he couldn't know for sure. As soon as they noticed he was starting to weaken, they buckled his ankles, wrists, and midsection, but didn't bother with the one that would keep his head still. Draco started screaming. He didn't think he was making any words, but it was his body's last-ditch effort at saving itself, which was proving to be a losing battle.

"Oh, shut up, you," the nurse yelled over his cries, and her face contorted into a hideous scowl. She looked uncannily like Aunt Bellatrix when she did that. Draco couldn't look at her.

One doctor held his head still. Two others attached tiny, white, sticky things to each of his temples. He stopped screaming. His voice had grown too hoarse to do much for him, anyway—the only people who would be able to hear were the people in this room, and perhaps the little floating girl in the room adjacent to the one he was in. Instead he turned to prayer, which was the only thing his mind could think of to try. It was funny how a life-threatening situation could harshly remind him that he really was a believer. But could God save him now? He thought he waited a bit too late to send his prayer on through. The sight of a doctor's grubby hand fondling the handle to a gigantic switched reinforced this idea.

"Keep your head still or it might fuck up your brain," a doctor said. Either he acting very unprofessional or he wasn't really a doctor. Draco was betting on the latter. But who cared what he was betting on, because he was probably going to die soon. He complied and held his head still, anyhow.

"Alright, Jones, flip the switch," one of them said, and the doctor holding the handle eagerly yanked it downward.

Draco didn't know what he was feeling. He really didn't. All he knew was that his eyes were closed, and it hurt, and he felt his entire body convulsing on the table. After what felt like an eternity, but was really only 60 seconds, they flipped the switch off, and Draco gasped desperately for breath but didn't open his eyes.

"Again," someone said, and the doctor flipped the switch once more. The same thing happened all over again, except this time, the strange pain was worse. Draco felt his mind slipping away, going somewhere else. Be that because his body was taking that one final step into keeping him alive and spindling down into insanity, or because he was blacking out, he wasn't sure, and he didn't have the energy to wonder anymore. He let it happen. Somewhere distantly he could hear himself screaming. But he didn't care anymore.

xxx

Two hours later they took him back to his room. They didn't have any trouble at all with him this time. They told him to walk, and he walked. The only reason the nurse had a hold of his arm now was to keep him upright. He tottered obediently alongside her.

They got to his room, tipped him onto the bed, and left. He was confused, scared, and aching. He didn't know what happened or what he was going to do or if they would ever do that again to him. He tried to make his brain think about it but he couldn't quite do it. He looked down and there was blood all over his clothes. He didn't remember how it got there.

But there was one thing his mind was screaming: _Harry, Harry, Harry_. Harry could help. Harry always knew what to do when it came to things like this. He had to get Harry. He slid off of his bed, running his hands along the wall to steady himself, and pushed open the adjoining door that led to Harry's room.

When Harry saw him coming, he rushed over to help him stay on two feet, putting a firm grip on either side of his body. There was blood all over Harry's floor. Had he done that? Did he hurt Harry?

"What did they do to you, Draco?" Harry said, and Draco looked up at him with wide eyes. He sort of remembered what they _did_, but not _why_.

"They—" he said, but stopped. His voice didn't sound like his own; it was weak and cracked. He cleared his throat, but that didn't make it any better. "They took me to this…place…I had never seen it before, and…"

Draco screwed his eyes shut, trying to think. He was getting mad at himself for not being able to remember. He tried to re-trace his steps, but it was a little blurry.

"They put these things…on my head…" Draco said, and his eyes pricked with tears.

"Would it make you feel better if you stayed with me tonight?" Harry murmured.

Draco hesitated. He thought about it. He knew he should probably say no, but…

"Yes," Draco said, nodding, his limp hair shaking around his face.

"Come on, then," Harry said, guiding him over to the bed. The covers had already been pulled back. With some difficulty (and a frustrated denial of help from Harry) he took his shoes and trousers off and pulled the covers up around his midsection.

Harry got into bed beside him, and they faced each other, like they did in Draco's bed the day they talked about Harry's haywire magic. Harry reached over and pushed Draco's bangs out of his eyes, and surely enough, there were two square marks where they had stuck the electrodes.

"They used electroshock on you, didn't they, Draco?" he said quietly.

"I don't remember what they called it, Harry," Draco murmured. "I just remember…I just remember it hurting."

Harry knew electroshock therapy was still used today in the Muggle world—again, thanks to his perusal of one of Hermione's coffee table magazines. Other than its tendency to make patients feel a bit of short term memory loss, it usually did some good with depression. But they only did it willingly, and they _definitely _didn't do it long enough to leave scorch marks on someone's forehead.

Also, he was fairly certain that Draco's problem wasn't exactly depression. But he didn't figure now would be the greatest time to ask about it. Perhaps tomorrow when he calmed down.

"They're using Muggle techniques _here_?" Harry said. "But why?"

That seemed to jog something in Draco's memory. His eyes widened and he sat up in bed.

"They've got _Brad_!" he said. "I saw him, he was in a room, and they had him strapped down, and they were taking this _thing_ and hammering it into his _head_ and—and there are others, they've got them locked up because they can't control their magic, they'll send _you _there next, and who _knows _what they'll do with me—"

"Hold on," Harry said. "Calm down. It's four in the morning, Draco, maybe you should try and rest for a bit and tell me about everything when your…when your nerves have settled."

"I can't," Draco said. "Not after all that, not after—"

"Well, how about you try," Harry said, and pulled Draco close, holding him snug. Draco gave in without a fight, letting himself be cradled into a safe and warm embrace. He even put his own arm around Harry's back.

"Leave the light on," Draco mumbled into Harry's shirt, closing his eyes.

"I will," Harry said, pulling the covers around Draco's shoulders.

* * *

**End Notes: **Finally we see a bit of Harry/Draco. I think I was losing people when the first three chapters didn't have much mention of it, which I can understand. But I just want things to progress logically, I guess. I dunno. :/ I'll try to pick it up a little.


	5. Chapter 5

**Warnings: **This story is primarily written to be a Drarry, or a HPDM, or Harry/Draco, whatever you like to call it. But it's a slow-burner, meaning they're not going to fall in love and have sex with each other overnight. Because that's just a little bit ridiculous. And I hate it when stories do that.

This story will also have a lot of suggestive themes in it, such as depictions of different disorders, self-harm, male/male relationships, etc.

**In this chapter, there is no violence. **I caught a lot of hell for that, last chapter. I guess I didn't give enough warning, or something. But in this one, there's nothing gory or bloody. Just so you know.

**Author's Comments: **Last chapter got mixed reception. A lot of people hated it because of the violence. A lot of people loved it. But this chapter, I went for something a bit different. The real meaty stuff will start next chapter, with the help of a new character I wrote in. Hope you like it! (:

* * *

They decided the only place they would get some peace and quiet without the constant interruption of orderlies checking in on them would be in the swimming pool, since the lifeguard did all the monitoring there. They swam out to the center of the pool, murmuring to each other. The lifeguard didn't pay them any mind, since they weren't drowning or trying to drown each _other_. Apparently seemingly senseless murmuring was commonplace here and was routinely overlooked.

"But that doesn't make sense," Harry said finally.

Draco looked as if Harry had just slapped him. "You don't believe me?" He brushed the wet strands of hair away, revealing two square blisters on either side of his forehead.

Harry tried to pick his words carefully. "I believe _that _happened," he said, "but…maybe you're just not…_remembering _everything else properly."

Draco squished water through his fist, thinking. "But it just _seems _so real," he said.

"Maybe you're brain's just a bit…off right now. Maybe you'll start remembering what really happened later on."

Draco furrowed his brow. "I dunno, Harry. I think…" He never finished his sentence.

xxx

They were sitting around in a circle like Muggle kindergarten children, ready for group to start. Draco was more himself by then, but he still had a slightly confused look in his eye. His friend Ricky sat far away from them, at the other side of the circle.

Brad was not there.

"Brad's not here," Draco whispered heavily in Harry's ear.

Harry raked his eyes across the twenty-something people that had been sorted to work in their group. Draco was right—Brad wasn't one of them.

"Well, maybe he just—"

"No, you always get sorted together with whoever's got the room next to yours," Draco whispered, shaking his head.

Draco was exhausted. He felt his head falling down, down. He was asleep on Harry's shoulder before group even started.

An orderly, a new one for a change, was walking toward them, a fold-out chair in hand and an activity bag thrown over the other. Harry started at his feet, of course, since he was sitting on the ground and the other man wasn't, but when his eyes reached the orderly's face, he nearly gasped.

It was Zacharias Smith. He'd know those beady eyes anywhere. He'd have been cut out to be a Slytherin, no doubt…except for the fact that he was so dumb.

He eyed Harry with surprise, and looked at him with even more surprise when he saw who was drooling on his shoulder. But he kept himself professional, clearing his throat and folding out his chair in the center of the circle. He shrugged off his bag and sat it on the floor next to him.

"Hello, everyone," he said cheerily, and twenty or so pairs of eyes looked up at him with bleary eyes. Everyone hated group, and Zacharias seemed to know this. But he kept acting sickeningly sweet nonetheless.

"My name is Zacharias, I just started yesterday. Since it's my first real day on the job, how about we do something simple, yeah?"

There were some mumbles to the affirmative, and Zacharias nodded. He stood up, taking his activity bag with him. "Now, I'll need you all to get in groups of _two_…"

People started shuffling closer to one another. Zacharias pulled a small stack of construction parchment and an eight-count box of soft-tipped, multicolor pre-loaded quills from his bag and gave each group a set. He finally made it around to Harry and Draco, where he stooped down on his knees and looked Harry in the eye.

"How _are _you, Harry?" he said, brow furrowed with concern. Zacharias may be a prat, but his worry looked genuine. So he decided to tell him the truth.

"I'm here because I can't control my magic," he said slowly.

"Too strong?" Zacharias said.

"Yeah."

"And what's…er, what's Malfoy in here for?" he said, his gaze falling to the blonde snoring lightly on his shoulder.

"He doesn't like to talk about it," Harry said.

"I'll bet it has something to do with his dad," Zacharias said darkly.

"I have no idea." Harry wished they'd stop talking about Draco while he was right there and he just couldn't hear. It made him feel…dirty.

"Well," Zacharias said, standing up. "You'll have to wake him up to get participation credit today, so you might get on that." He handed Harry the parchment and box of quills, waving a hand at him as he went further down the line.

Harry ran his arm up and down Draco's shoulder. "Draco…Draco, wake up."

Draco cracked his eyes open, then, realizing where he had fallen asleep, sat up with a sharp intake of breath through his nose. He looked around to see if he'd missed anything, blinking heavily, a hand trailing up to pat down his hair where he'd mussed it.

"Hey," he said thickly, eyeing Zacharias Smith. "Is that…is that the Hufflepuff boy…?"

"Zacharias Smith," Harry said, nodding.

"What's that?" Draco said, looking at the supplies in Harry's hand, but Zacharias had moved back to the center of the room and was explaining.

"Now, I want each of you to take a piece of parchment—if you mess up, don't worry, that's why I gave you lots of extra—and pick a marker quill out of the box. And then I want you to talk to your partner for a bit, get to know them if you haven't, and draw a picture of what you think _they _feel like on the inside. All right?"

There were murmurs of confirmation, and people started shifting around. Draco sighed, puffing his cheeks out, and pulled a red marker quill out of the box.

"Here," he said, and Harry picked out a blue marker quill. They each took a piece of parchment from the stack and splayed it out in front of them.

"I think for you," Draco said, "I'm going to draw…" He drew a giant spiraling line, steadily getting smaller as it reached the end of the paper. "A tornado. Wait." He fished out a purple marker quill and stabbed little dots all in his spiral line. "That's your magic floating around in it." He held it up for Harry to see, smirking.

"Wow, that's…that's really beautiful."

"I know, thanks," Draco said. He sat his piece of parchment back down on the floor and got a new one. "Let's see what you think _I _look like on the inside."

Smiling already, Harry drew a giant circle that nearly took up the whole sheet. He colored it completely in, nearly making the quill marker run out of ink before the refilling charm could kick in.

"This," he said, holding up the paper, "is your stomach. It's a bottomless pit, see there?"

"Clever," Draco said, raising his eyebrows. And then he did something peculiar—he laughed. Everyone turned to look at him, because that was a sound that went unheard in a place like this. All of the other patients looked generally alarmed, like he had finally lost it for good, but Zacharias turned to look at him and smiled approvingly.

"Here," Draco said, giving Harry another piece of parchment. "Draw another."

Harry would, later, but he wanted to watch Draco draw first. Draco made a squiggly, wavy circle, and wrote _Harry's Brain _on the edge of the parchment and drew an arrow to the squiggly circle. "What's in your brain…hmm…" he got out a black marker and started drawing stick figures. "Weasel," he said, putting a mop of red atop one of the figures. "Granger," he said, drawing brown scraggles on another. "Mmm…Weaselette," drawing Ron's hair in longer form. "Cho Yang," he said, drawing straight black hair.

"_Chang_," Harry said, leaning over to peer at Draco's drawing, their foreheads nearly touching.

"Huh?"

"Cho _Chang_, not Cho _Yang_," Harry said, and he laughed. More weird stares from everyone else, but Zacharias just shook his head in amusement.

"Oh." Draco smiled. "What else should go in your brain?"

"Put you in there," Harry said, pointing to a spot right beside Cho where he should go.

"Really?" he said, and looked up at Harry. Harry saw something flash in his eyes, but he didn't know what. He swallowed hard.

"Sure," he said. "Why…why not?"

Draco drew another stick figure and got out the yellow quill marker, for his hair. He hovered over the circle that served as his head.

"How should I draw my hair?"

"Just draw straight lines going down until you get to the bottom of your head," Harry said. "But use kind of…kind of _curved _lines for your bangs," Harry said.

Draco scribbled on some hair. It wasn't bad. Harry could definitely tell who he was trying to draw. He smiled.

"So," a voice said over their heads, and it was then that they realized how close they were to each other. They slumped over on their arses, cheeks flushing, and looked up at Zacharias, who had made his way back around to them. "Let's see what you two have drawn, then."

Harry held up his big blob, and Draco held up his brain and his tornado. Zacharias looked from one to the other, then back to one, then back to the other, a grin steadily spreading on his face.

"Wait, let me look at this one," he said, crouching to look at Draco's drawing of Harry's brain. "Let me guess. These two are Ron and Hermione," he pointed, and Draco and Harry nodded.

"And who…Ginny?" They nodded.

He stared at the drawing for some time. "But this one with the black, who is that?"

"Cho Yang," Draco said.

"Cho _Chang_?" Zacharias said, and they all tittered in unison. Maybe they were _all _a lot crazier than they thought.

"And this one on the end here, is that…" he squinted.

"Me," Draco said triumphantly, and Zacharias smiled at him.

"Harry, maybe you should draw what's in Mal—Draco's brain while we've still got a bit of time left."

"Right," Harry said as Zacharias went off to look at more drawings.

"What _is _in your brain, Draco?" Harry said, drawing a crude brain shape on his paper with a marker quill, looking over at the blonde in question. Draco grinned and exposed his electrode burns.

"Electrissy," he said with a smirk.

"First of all, it's _electricity, _and second of all, don't say things like that," Harry frowned.

"Well, I don't _have _any friends," he said, being brutally honest with himself. "Just draw a big picture of you in there." Before Harry could open his mouth to protest, to say that there must be _some_one, Pansy Parkinson or Blaise Zabini, perhaps, Draco was talking again.

"Use _this _for your hair and your glasses," Draco said, rolling a black marker quill over to him with a flick of his long, dainty finger. "And use _this _to draw your scar." He sent a red one rolling over to him.

Harry shook his head at the ridiculousness of it all. He drew a giant stick figure inside his wobbly circle, taking up the whole thing. He drew a bird's nest-looking thing for his hair, which was pretty spot-on, actually. He started to draw the round frames of his glasses, but stopped, because he remembered the frames of his glasses were square now. So he made two little squares where eyes should go, connecting the squares with a little line in the middle and drew two other small lines connecting them to either side of his head. Then he uncapped the red marker quill and drew a zigzag on the forehead, slightly off to the left. Lastly, he wrote _Draco's Brain _in big letters up at the top. He recapped the marker quills and rolled them back to Draco, who put them back in the box.

"Like it?" Harry said, holding it up.

"Yeah," Draco said with a sad little smile. And there went that thing again, that thing in his eyes, the thing that looked like something was dying out. Harry sat the drawing down in a hurry.

A few awkward moments passed where they looked about the room, stealing glances at one another from time to time, until Zacharias finally said, "Alright, _now _I want you to give _your _drawings to your partner. That way they can look back on them later if they want."

There was a riffling of papers as people exchanged them. Harry didn't quite see the point of not just throwing them in the rubbish bin, but he accepted the papers proffered to him in Draco's outstretched hand. Draco scooped Harry's drawings off the floor and looked at one, then flipped to the other, then at one, then back to the other. Harry felt a bit bad that he had to keep them as a hurtful reminder—especially the one that reminded him that he had no friends.

"You can toss them if you want," Harry said, low enough so Zacharias wouldn't hear.

"I want them," Draco said, barely above a whisper.

Harry was about to press him for more when Zacharias said, "Okay, that's enough for tonight, you can go on ahead and go back to your rooms now. You all did wonderfully. _And_," he peered around the room brightly. "You get to keep the marker quills as a gift from me, as long as you'll share with your partner. And if you want some more construction parchment to draw on, you can come get some from this pile." He dug around in his bag and sat a thick stack of soft parchment on his chair. "See you all Thursday!"

Harry got up, dusting himself off, looking down at the drawings Draco had done—the little figures of Ron, Hermine, Ginny, "Cho Yang," and Draco himself. From the corner of his eye, he watched Draco go over to the parchment pile and grab up a greedy stack of it before heading back over to Harry.

"You know," Draco said. "When you sleep, you snore."

"Yeah?" Harry said, grinning. "If you don't like it, you can sleep in your _own _bed all alone, then."

"No, thanks," Draco said casually, and instead of walking into his own room, he steered himself into Harry's.

* * *

**End Notes: **I know that this chapter is radically different from the last one. But the chapters will start meshing together with the next one I'm already writing. (:


	6. Chapter 6

**Warnings: **This story is primarily written to be a Drarry, or a HPDM, or Harry/Draco, whatever you like to call it. But it's a slow-burner, meaning they're not going to fall in love and shag overnight. Because that's just a little bit ridiculous.

Oh! **This chapter contains no violence. **Although I do love to write bloody, disgusting scenes, I've abstained. xD

Also, though this may spoil things for some, I don't want to hear any sass about it so I'm going to go ahead and say it - **awkward kissing scene that some may consider gross_. _**It kind of ruins it, I know, but sometimes people nitpick. Just trying to cover my bases, here.

**Author's Note: **I finally got a new chapter for this up! I'm pretty excited. I've been neglecting this fic for far too long.

Also, I've started a LiveJournal! I started it to put my Drarry drabbles, ficlets, snippets of fanfics that didn't pan out, 'deleted scenes' from fanfics I've started, and also fics that don't have a category on FF. My URL is lazycreeper -dot- livejournal -dot- com. My friends from school don't use LiveJournal so I have no friends on there. So you should add me. So I'm not FOREVER ALONE. D;

(And if the FF code deletes the 'link' I put up, you can find it listed on my profile.)

* * *

Harry was used to sleeping ramrod straight—if he wasn't sleeping in his bed at Hogwarts, he was sleeping in that tiny thing at the Dursley's. And even after that, when he moved to Grimmauld Place on his own, he slept in Sirius's old bedroom, which also had a single-sized bed in it.

Draco, however was _not _used to sleeping ramrod straight, nor did he feel the need to show some courtesy and try, because he was literally sleeping _diagonally _in Harry's bed. Harry had rolled over on his side and curled into the fetal position, because Draco had nudged him to the very, very edge of the bed in his sleep.

Harry couldn't sleep this way. He rolled over and tried to push Draco's legs a little further away, but as soon as he laid a palm on Draco's silk-clad shin, Draco moaned a frightening, guttural sound into his pillow. Harry yanked his hands away like they were on fire.

The only solution was for him, too, to sleep diagonally. He positioned himself to mimic Draco, his feet hanging off the bed, the bottom half of him sticking out of the covers. He was facing the opposite direction Draco was, because he felt odd sleeping the other way around.

That wasn't much better. He sighed.

He had just dozed off to sleep when Draco chose _that _moment to squirm around, digging his arse into the small of Harry's back, nudging him even closer to the edge of the bed. Harry sighed, contemplating sleeping on the floor, but decided to give it one more go.

{*}

He must've somehow drifted to sleep because the next voice he heard wasn't Draco's.

He heard the sound of the door opening first, which is what initially jarred him from sleep, and a sharp, loud voice woke him the rest of the way up.

"Eight a.m., Harry, time for breakfast, wouldn't want—oh," Zacharias said, and Harry could hear the door shutting behind him as he stepped into the room. "Protocol says I should write you up for this, you know, but—it's too damn _funny_."

Harry steadily became more aware of his body as the sleep lifted away from him. He realized he weighed about twice as much as he should have. He turned his head, getting a big mouthful of Draco's hair. Draco had literally rolled on top of him in his sleep, half of his body draped over Harry's. The two of them were about to topple off the side of the bed, they were so close to the edge.

"Little help here?" Harry said, his voice still coated with sleep.

"Sure," Zacharias said with a laugh.

Zacharias unceremoniously rolled Draco off of Harry and onto his stomach. Draco moaned again, much like he did last night when Harry tried to wake him. He sounded like someone was trying to murder him in his sleep.

"Might I ask _how _he got into your bed, Harry?" Zacharias asked as Harry sat up, propping his back against the headboard.

Normally Harry would tell him no, it was none of his business, but since he didn't want Zacharias to write them up, he told him. "Ah, well…Draco's been a little shaken up ever since they, er…well, ever since they did electroshock on him the other day."

Zacharias stared at him for a moment. "Harry, I've never heard of that procedure before…and I would know if something like that existed. I know I just started here and all, but they were _very _thorough with going over all the spells that can and can't be used on patients."

"It wasn't a spell," Harry said. "It was a…" He was going to say a _machine, _but he knew Zacharias would have no idea what that was. He sighed.

"They used an old Muggle idea to try and sedate him," he said slowly, trying to pick his words with care so that Zacharias might get what he was trying to say.

"That's impossible. We don't use _any_thing to sedate patients except for calming draughts, and that's only in extreme cases. And the only spells we're allowed to use are binding spells, and that's _only _in emergency."

"Your magic can get through the wards?" Harry said.

"…Well, yes. Our wands are registered to override them." Zacharias absently grazed his hand over his wand, held securely in its holster.

"But anyhow, Harry," Zacharias said. "I think Draco might be lying to you just to get some attention. I've read over Draco's file, and that's not all that uncommon with him—oh, I shouldn't have told you that," Zacharias said, clamping his lips together.

_Lying to get attention…? _Harry thought. That would be just like Draco to lie about something like this, even though Harry was convinced he'd changed quite a bit since Hogwarts. But then again…if he was lying, how did he get those two marks on his head?

Harry brushed the sleeping Draco's bangs out of the way, and sure enough, the twin blisters on his head were still there, pink and shining.

"He's not lying," Harry said. "Look."

Zacharias leaned over the bed and gasped. "How the hell did he do that to himself?"

"He _didn't _do that to himself," Harry said. "Someone at this hospital did. And he hasn't been quite right since."

"…But there's no way, Harry," Zacharias said, shaking his head. "We don't use force unless we absolutely have to. And we _definitely _don't leave marks on patients under our care. Whoever would've done that to him would've been fired as soon as the offensive spell filtered through the ward."

"They weren't _using _spells," Harry muttered, more to himself than to Zacharias now. "That's how they're getting away with it."

Zacharias thought a moment, still looking at the marks on Draco's head. "Okay, but even if that were true…what sort of Muggle technique could do _that_?"

Harry found out it was incredibly hard to explain electricity to someone who had never seen or even _heard _of it before. He started with lightning and worked his way through a Muggle bloke named Benjamin Franklin and ended with saying basically nothing in the Muggle world would work without it. Zacharias continuously nodded his head throughout the whole thing, his brow furrowed in thought.

"Let's just say I believe you, Harry, about Draco being a victim of this…_electroshock_," Zacharias said carefully. "How would we have electricity here in the Wizarding world to power the electroshock machine?"

"Maybe they used a non-offensive spell to power it," Harry said, "or perhaps they bewitched it before they smuggled it inside. Or maybe—"

"Alright, I get it, infinite possibilities," Zacharias said, holding up his hands. "You know what? I think we should wake up Draco and have him try and tell me where it is. Then I can go and have a look."

"Brilliant," Harry said with a nod. "Er—_you _wake him up, eh?"

"Fine," Zacharias said, shrugging his shoulders. He leaned over the bed and put his hands on Draco's side, shaking him back and forth. "Wakey wakey, Drakey…"

"_Stop_," Draco croaked. He threw his arms up over his face to shield his eyes.

"We've got to talk to you about something, Draco," Zacharias said in his reasoning-with-the-crazy-people voice. "We need to talk about those marks on your head."

Draco lifted his arms away and stared bleary, narrowed at Zacharias. "How do _you _know about that?"

"Harry just told me about your deal with the _electricity_," he said, clearly relishing in the fact that he'd used his new word correctly. "Why don't you sit up and try to tell me some things about it?"

"Don't you know about it already?" Draco said, shimmying up the bed to sit up next to Harry. He rubbed at his itchy eyes.

"No, Draco, that's the thing." Zacharias was tired of standing. He perched himself at the foot of the bed. "It's not okay if _any_one here is harming you. We're not allowed to do that. I'm going to look into it if this really did happen to you."

"Well," Draco said, his eyes puffy even though Harry knew for a fact that he slept quite well. "My memory's not so good after—_this_." He pointed to his forehead. "I _know _that happened. But I can't remember where or when or how."

Zacharias frowned. "How about you try and retrace your steps?"

Draco thought for a moment, then shook his head, his limp hair flopping everywhere. "I can't. I don't remember anything. Just…a few things here and there that don't make any sense."

Draco furrowed his brow, frowning, obviously struggling with his sudden gap in memory and what he _did _remember being none too pleasant. Harry patted him on the shoulder and his features softened a bit.

"I carried you to the nurse's station because you were throwing up blood," Harry said. "Do you remember that?"

Draco shook his head.

"And then they took you into a hospital room to be checked out by a doctor, and that's all I know. You don't remember that, either?"

Draco shook his head.

Harry patted his shoulder again. "'S alright. Maybe It'll come to you later."

"Right. Maybe." But Draco sounded thoroughly unconvinced.

{*}

On weekdays, it was always mandatory for patients to wake up at eight a.m. and have breakfast. Zacharias had been graceful and allowed them to skip it without writing them up. Harry never was one for breakfast, and Draco miraculously felt like eating nothing.

They lounged together on the bed for most of the morning, batting idle chit-chat back and forth. Harry didn't want to admit it, but had both of them not been so snotty to each other (or if he'd been sorted into Slytherin, he thought with a shudder), they had enough in common that they probably would have been pretty decent friends back in Hogwarts.

He wondered what that would've been like.

"Too bad I was too busy insulting you in school, Harry, otherwise we might've shared more than a few hexes every now and again," Draco sighed, seeming to read Harry's mind.

"Yeah," Harry laughed. "True."

Draco rolled over to face him. His face was oddly neutral as he stared into Harry's eyes, and Harry felt slightly uncomfortable that those eyes weren't glaring at him in anger or spite or hate. Draco's face looked odd when it wasn't contorted into some superior look of disgust. He looked…almost attractive.

Draco squirmed closer to Harry. Now they were only a few centimeters apart. Draco smelled of floral soap and a hint of expensive cologne.

"How come you never did like me when we were in school?" Draco muttered, his eyes half-lidded.

"Because you were a prat," Harry muttered back.

"Am I a prat now?" Draco asked.

"Yeah," Harry said with a quiet chuckle. "But not nearly as much as you used to be."

Then Draco adjusted himself to get closer still, putting his lips gently atop Harry's. He only let the strange excuse for a kiss go on for a couple seconds before he pulled away.

"What was that for?" Harry whispered, his breath ghosting across Draco's lips.

"Just wanted to see what it would feel like to kiss a bloke," Draco whispered.

Harry had a reply on his lips, but Draco kissed him again. This one was a bit better, as far as kisses went. It was more forceful, more needy. Draco's hand reached up, and Harry thought for sure Draco was going to put his palm on his face, but it instead came to rest on his upper arm.

This kiss didn't last much longer than the first, though. Draco pulled away, this time with an ever-so-slight _smack _sound.

"We should probably stop before someone comes in and we get written up," Draco whispered.

"Yeah," Harry muttered. Draco made to shimmy away and return to his original position on his back, staring up at the ceiling and listening to Harry talk, when he felt a hand at his hip, fingertips rubbing at the hem of his silk pyjamas.

"Perhaps…" Harry muttered, and it was he who kissed Draco this time. Draco made a little sound of surprise, but happily played along anyhow.

Harry slid his tongue along Draco's bottom lip in lazy motions. Draco's lips slightly parted, allowing the tips of their tongues to touch for the briefest of moments. Harry felt Draco's finger pads digging into his arms ever-so-slightly as he pushed their lips together again.

Draco pulled away, a thin trail of saliva running between their mouths. "We really should stop," he said, and Harry was glad to note his voice sounded reluctant.

"Er…right," Harry said. "Sorry about that."

They both rolled over on their backs, staring up at the ceiling in awkward, awkward silence.

{*}

When they walked down the hallway for lunch, they found a nurse bustling out of Brad's room with a cart, stacked high with his things. They looked into his room and it was completely empty. Not even the sheets were left on the bed.

"They only…clean rooms out like this when someone's died," Draco muttered.

Harry remembered Draco's cries of _'They've got Brad!' _on the night he came back from his hospital room, how worried and convinced he'd been. Harry turned to Draco, and the blonde's face had that furrowed look of concentration on it again, like somewhere down there he knew this and was trying to pick it back to the forefront. Maybe there really was something to Draco's morbid story that night. Maybe not _all _of it was true, but…

Draco shook his head. Nothing. He couldn't remember.

"Let's just go and have lunch," Draco mumbled, strolling down the hallway with a forced air of superiority.

{*}

Harry told Draco that if he intended to sleep in his bed again, he was _not _to sleep diagonally or he would roll him into the floor. Once Draco crossed into his bedroom and rumpled the sheets up to make it look like he'd slept there, in case another orderly besides Zacharias came by to check on them, he climbed into Harry's bed clad in silver silk pyjamas.

Within minutes, the sound of Draco's heavy breathing filled Harry's ears. Harry didn't think it possible to fall asleep so quickly.

It was about two in the morning, when both of them were subconscious and snoring, when things started to get strange.

Draco was ripped from his sleep by a sound coming from the inside of his brain, something unbearably loud, something that sounded like a firecracker going off in his ear. He shot up into a sitting position, completely out of breath, darting his eyes here, there, everywhere.

Vivid pictures floated through his mind's eye—horrid, bloody pictures, things he didn't understand at first, but realization slowly started to trickle through. He was seeing things he had once forgotten.

It was pitch dark in the room, but he felt his way until his fingers ghosted over what he was looking for—the construction parchment and marker quills from Zacharias. He grabbed them up, clinging them to his chest as he ran out into the hallway to get some light.

He spilled the markers onto the floor and started drawing page after page after page before he forgot again.

Through all the commotion he'd woken Harry up—unlike him, Harry was not a sound sleeper in the slightest. He padded out into the hallway with bare feet, staring down at Draco's body hunched over the paper.

"What're you doing?" Harry murmured, his voice tinged with worry.

"Drawing Zacharias a map," Draco said, scribbling faster than he ever thought he could.

* * *

**End Notes: **The scene with Draco sleeping diagonally - this really happened to me, in real life, down to when Draco rolled over and dug his arse into Harry's back. One of my friends did this to me, and when he woke up, he was so embarrassed and wouldn't stop apologizing the whole day. :P


End file.
